Samaipata Ventures Framework for Marketplaces: Madrid Edition #1yearin1hour

By Siddharth Choksi, Marketing Analyst at Samaipata Ventures.

We work 24/7 to stay on top of the fast-moving ecosystem, and it’s through these efforts that we’ve come up with a so-called ‘framework for marketplaces’, which is essentially a synopsis of our humble view on this phenomenal business model. In celebration of our 1st anniversary at Samaipata, we’re thrilled to share it with you. We look forward to meeting you soon. Please find the presentation linked at the end of the post.

Last Thursday, Samaipata had the pleasure of presenting a keynote on marketplaces at Google Campus Madrid. To our delight, more than 250 founders and entrepreneurs attended the event!  As we all know time is a luxury for entrepreneurs, hence we condensed all the information we’ve gathered from decades of accumulated experience of our team (including over 2500 startups we’ve analyzed at Samaipata over the last year), into a 1 hour workshop.

We organized a little cocktail at the end of the keynote for the attendees to network with one another and, as the night progressed, the ambiance amplified; the fact that we had to literally escort  some people out of the venue at the end of the night was immensely flattering to our entire team who worked so hard to make the evening a success. If we had to sum up the drive behind holding such an event in 3 simple points, we’d say that:

1. You drive Us! — It’s only because of the intelligence that the startup ecosystem fed us with that we were able to reach where we are today, which is why we think it’s only fair that we return the gesture. To all you entrepreneurs: YOU guys made this possible!  This is your framework! Whether you ignore it, simply view it, read it, or use it, it’s completely up to you, we just think it may be something that could be of use for some of you guys!
2. We’re all in this together! — We strongly believe that in the startup ecosystem, collaboration is vital for growth, and knowledge-sharing is fundamental to empower and improve the market. As cliché as it may sound, we’ve got to help each other to help ourselves
3. Last but not least, we love having FUN! — We love hosting events like this because we get to talk to brilliant entrepreneurs from all sorts of backgrounds over some ice-cold beers, now who can say no to that? Also, if any of you guys have a marketplace startup, don’t hesitate to knock on our door or shoot us a mail anytime

As you know, the term ‘framework’ is used to describe a set of patterns, KPIs, and characteristics to observe when developing any specific project. This is basically what we sought to do; we’ve created a little document with which we want to provide entrepreneurs with our key insights and observations on marketplaces (yes, we’re marketplace nerds).

It’s important to note that our ‘framework’ has been condensed into a mere 15 key points. However, we will frequently be uploading relevant blog posts on our website where you will soon be able to improve your learning on the main marketplace dynamics, and find our standpoint on numerous other key points. We will also be publishing individual blog posts on each point that we mentioned in the framework that will too be at your disposal on our website so stay tuned!

Nevertheless, we’ve done our best to clarify each point as much as possible by providing a brief description of our point of view, as well as including a “success case” of a startup that in our opinion brilliantly executed this factor (apologies for including some of our portfolio companies, we love them too).

To simplify, we’ve divided our keynote into 3 parts:

1. Founding Team: what we look for in founders, i.e. hard skills, soft skills, and above all: passion for their business. We want rockstars!  (guess what, some of our team members have completed an IRONMAN!)
2. Marketplace Dynamics: the core chunk of the presentation which addresses market size, demand and supply acquisition, product disruption and growth dynamics. We want you all to be the Amazons and Airbnbs of tomorrow!
3. Cap Table Structure: A brief comment on our view on company governance, founder’s retention, and founders-investors relations. It’s like a marriage: you need a whole lot of love and communication for it to be a lasting and fruitful relationship! ❤️️

Kindly note that this is merely our humble professional recommendation and by no means a ‘definitive guideline to success’. We just want to share our point of view on the marketplaces ecosystem from all the things we have learnt from your adventures!

Side note: to all entrepreneurs who couldn’t attend our Madrid Edition, we’re delighted to announce that we will be holding similar events in London (April), Paris and Barcelona (TBC) in the coming months!

Click on this link and insert your email to access our framework for marketplaces.

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